Too drunk to find my dinghy

Anyone
who has sailed the BVIs will know of the Willie T
in the Bight at Norman Island. It’s
an institution. The Wiliam Thormton aka Willie T is a 98′ schooner converted
into a two deck floating bar.

 As I was
sitting on the train coming home yesterday a smile slipped across my face as I recalled one of the funnest evenings of my life about 10 years ago spent at
the Willie T.

My wife
(not her in the pic. This is a random pic to protect the innocent) and I were in the Caribbean for the first time and at the end of a Learn-to-bareboat
course with Steve Colgate’s Offshore Sailing School (Offcourse as my wife calls
it). It was an excellent week under the supervision of central casting
charter skipper, Capt Tom. Tom was a gruff divorcee from Florida who looked a bit like a pint-sized Magnum PI with a beer gut fueled on
Mount Gay and Ginger

There
were two boats in the course: My wife and I on one boat with a jolly single
lady from Connecticut. The other boat was a mixed bag: A
couple who looked like Meg Ryan and Harrison Ford but were dull as crap and spent
most of the time locked in their V-berth; a Canadian nurse and a plonker who
thought he knew more than the instructors. We named him Captain Giblet Bag as he spent most of the
day in a Speedo swim suit that looked like..well pull the giblet bag out of a roast chicken and …er the name fit.

On
our
last day and night we were cut loose from the skipper and sent off
sans-instructor from Roadtwon to Norman Island. It’s a relatively short
simple sail to the Bight. It’s a big easy anchorage with the prospect
of snorkelling the famous caves (apparently the inspiration for treasure island) and last but not least fun at the
Willie T’s.

Our
boat
got to a nice anchorage early and we smugly watched the other course
boat come
in and get tangled up for an hour as Captain Gibblet Bag managed to get
the anchor chain wrapped around the keel. Plonker! God knows how he
managed it. We barbecued onboard and decided to hit the Willie T at
about 8:30 as things were
starting to liven up.

The folks
from the other boat went to bed early. My wife and our crewmate stayed on and
boy am I glad we did. What a party! The best drinks, the best music and best
dancing I can remember.

By about
12 things were getting interesting. Not-unattractive naked young ladies were
leaping off the top deck into the water. A guy who looked like a pirate was
doing tequila shots (lick the salt, drink the shot and bite the lemon) off a naked girl lying on the bar as his somewhat
peeved wife looked on.

By
about
2 we were fading and so I went in search of our dinghy (Easy Tman –
motor not sailing kind). When we arrived at 8:30 there were 6-8
dinghies. By now there were about 50 and about half were identical
white
fiberglass dinghies like ours all belonging to the Moorings. Suffice to
say I couldn’t single out mine and I couldn’t remember at which end of
the dock I had tied it off. I was very tired and emotional you see.
After about 15
minutes of looking I figured that our dinghy had quite obviously been stolen.

I went
back to the bar, always the sensible
solution, and got chatting to a local charter skipper from the Moorings:

“Don’t
worry Mon”, he advised me. “This happens a lot. Take any of the Moorings
dinghies. No one can tell the difference and they all end up back at the Mooorings base eventually”.

At
2 in
the morning and in my state of inebriation this all made perfect sense.
And he was wearing a captain’s hat so he must have known what he was
talking about.

The
problem was how to pull something like this off discreetly. Obviously just strolling
over and taking a dinghy wasn’t the way you did this. No, the way you did this
was pirate style!

I
jumped off the top deck on the opposite side from the
dock about as subtly as a brick. I then swam all the way round the
Willie T to dinghy dock. By this time most of the bar
was watching me if only out of curiosity.  There were bets on whether
the fat barracuda that lived under the Wille T was going to get me.

I hauled
myself into the first available Moorings dinghy from the stern and got the engine going. I got my wife and crew
mate into the dinghy and told them to cast off. Two problems:

Problem
#1: the owners of the dinghy clearly knew the drill better than we did
and had
tied a knot that I couldn’t have untied sober let alone in my current
state. It was some kind of double sheepshaggger with an overhead latte
cam twist.

Problem
#2; the owners showed up.

I looked
up to see a very kindly 65+ year old American lady, her husband and four other
cotton-topped friends staring pityingly at us from the dock.

 “I
am sorry but I think you may be in the wrong dinghy” said the kindly 65+
year old American lady.

 “Oh
really” said I innocently. “Ah so it is. Bless me. Don’t they all look the same. ha ha.”

We
shuffled off back to the bar trying to ignore the howls of laughter
pointed at us and persuaded the Moorings Captain to give us a
lift back to our boat.

The
next
morning I woke none too sprightly. Tongue like the bottom of a parrot’s
cage; bloodshot eyes and a very sore head. I looked blearily across the
Bight towards the Willie
T. Low and behold was one lone white fiberglass Moorings dinghy tied up
to the
dock.

Wasn’t it nice of someone to bring it back?